Simulation study on a stationary data acquisition SPECT system with multi-pinhole collimators attached to a triple-head gamma camera system

The aim of the study was to develop a new SPECT system that makes it possible to acquire projection data stationary using a triple-head gamma camera system. We evaluated several data acquisition geometry with multi-pinhole collimators attached to a triple-head gamma camera system. The number of pinholes for each camera was three to twelve, and we located these holes on collimator plates adequately. These collimator holes were tilted by predefined angles to efficiently cover the field of view of the data acquisition system. Acquired data were reconstructed with the OS-EM method. In the simulations, we used a three-dimensional point source phantom, brain phantom, and myocardial phantom. Attenuation correction was conducted with the x-ray CT image of the corresponding slice. Reconstructed images of the point source phantom showed that the spatial resolution could be improved with the small number of pinholes. On the other hand, reconstructed images of the brain phantom showed that the large number of pinholes yielded images with less artifact. The results of the simulations with the myocardial phantom showed that more than eight pinholes could yield an accurate distribution of activity when the source was distributed only in the myocardium. The results of the simulations confirmed that more than eight pinholes for each detector were required to reconstruct an artifact free image in the triple-head SPECT system for imaging of brain and myocardium.